Home » Search Center » Results: Genius Guide to Jazz
Results for "Genius Guide to Jazz"
How to Listen to Jazz
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
After surviving a near-fatal marriage and returning once again to the Original Geniusdome, the site of some of my best work (remember that really funny thing I wrote about jazz that time?), I recently took some time to reflect upon my contributions to Our Music. As the Dean of American Jazz Humorists©®, I have long considered ...
Who Listens to Jazz
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
There is an old Indian legend about several blind men examining an elephant. Each examines a different part of the creature and comes to a completely dissimilar conclusion as to what it is. Then the elephant, in a state of musth, stomps the helpless bastards to death to get at a '67 VW Microbus he mistakes ...
The Day the Music Died
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
On one of my infrequent trips outside the 'Dome recently, I stopped at a convenience store for a cold Coke Zero when I noticed a man about my age (48. 52, in heels) driving a red 1988 Pontiac Trans Am and blasting Whitesnake's “Here I Go Again" on his car stereo. He wore Zubaz workout pants ...
The Loneliest Monk
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
This article was first published in August 2005. This is an apocryphal story. During Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, he was doing an interview with supposed intellectual, Tabitha Soren of MTV. Soren asked him if there was anything he dreamt of doing. Clinton replied that he had always wanted to play sax with Thelonious ...
AAJ @ 20
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
If you think back over the past twenty years (not right now. You have this article to read yet), you'd realize that we are living in one of the most remarkable times in human history. The Internet has brought the entire world to our fingertips, and has given every cat on the face of the earth ...
An Evening With the Pops, Part II or, Louis Louis, We Gotta Go Now
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
Well, kids, when last we left Louis Armstrong; he had solidified his place as America's first legitimate jazz superstar on the basis of his seminal recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, was married to a legumicidal maniac and trusting his fortunes to a mobbed-up dandy who shared his neckwear with Al Capone. There ...
An Evening with the Pops
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
There are several theories concerning the origin of jazz. The most prevalent is that jazz originated primarily in New Orleans, a so-called “gumbo" of influences ranging from African polyrhythms to European classical to American Negro spirituals, and permeated the turn-of-the-century culture to the point that within two decades it had established hotbeds in the two largest ...
Struttin' With Some Barbecue
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
The contributions the South has made to America are innumerable and varied. My beloved Virginia, for example, gave such priceless gifts as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and seven presidents (I do not count William Henry Harrison, because he was a dumbass). We gave the nation Smithfield ham, Virginia peanuts, Eskimo pies, and the first ...
Pianist Enlargement
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
We're celebrating Keith Jarrett's 70th Birthday with the republication of this October 2003 Genius Guide to Jazz article. A recent AAJ poll reveals that if you were to ask the average American to name the most influential living jazz pianist, 89.4% of them would giggle like a schoolgirl because the word “pianist" sounds naughty ...
Brew Note
by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
In the fourteen years I've been with All About Jazz, a lot has changed in the world. One can no longer get on an airplane without undergoing an MRI and a colonoscopy; the Internet now lives mostly on smartphones and tablets (and phablets, whatever the hell those are) instead of desktops and laptops; Madonna is no ...
